Jim Leipold isn’t all that interested in the idea of getting married. He’s been with his long-term partner for 25 years, and says “We don’t feel the need to validate our relationship.” Equally, he points out, “We don’t need any blenders for our kitchen.”

Nonetheless, the 51-year-old Leipold, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement, a Washington-based legal trade association, and his partner, a 55-year-old physician, are at least considering marriage once more.

“We’ve said we would do this if there were concrete legal and financial benefits,”Leipold says.

It’s still not clear that there are enough benefits to tip the balance in matrimony’s favor for Leipold. But for thousands of others, Doma's demise has removed the last obstacle. And even those who decide against marriage are aware that this is time to compute its cost-benefit tradeoff, as well as to understand the financial challenges that lie ahead.

“It’s a revolutionary turning point,” says Mark Germain, CEO of Beacon Wealth Management, a New Jersey-based firm that advises many same-sex couples and gay individuals nationwide. “At the very least, by putting the possibility of filing joint federal tax returns in front of them, it’s making these couples think more about the need to do more planning.”

In other words: no more excuses. All of us tend to procrastinate tasks that seem impossibly complicated. Until now, same-sex couples at least had a somewhat valid excuse: until the IRS and the Social Security Administration recognized their relationships, it was a lot tougher to put together a basic plan.

“What happens to a couple who in the eyes of the federal government are legally married, and who want to divorce, but now live in a state that doesn’t recognize they were married in the first place?” asks Geoff Seaman, a Los Angeles-based wealth strategist with BNY Mellon. (It's possible to envision a resurgence of the Reno “quickie divorce” of the early 20th century …)

Pennsylvania, where Leipold and his partner make their home, is among the states that do not recognize same-sex unions.

“We still haven’t been clear on whether we’d get our social security benefits, or what would happen to our state taxes, if we married and it was recognized by the IRS but not the state,” says Leipold.

There are some answers, although they're not easy to find: the Social Security Administration is inviting applications for benefits even from those in states that don’t acknowledge same-sex marriage. As far as state taxes are concerned, the couple probably would have to prepare separate federal tax returns as well as a joint return, only filing the latter but using the former to compute their state tax obligations, Germain says.

The biggest issue: if one of the two died, the transfer of ownership of the half of their home to the surviving partner would be taxable.

Questions like that are going to keep financial advisors hopping for months and years to come, especially if more states follow in the path of Hawaii, Rhode Island and New Jersey.

Over the years, same-sex couples have found ways to solve some classic financial planning challenges regardless of whether their unions were officially recognized or not.

Gloria Bernstein, a quality manager for a medical equipment manager in New Jersey, has always had a joint bank account with her partner, and they have owned a home together for 20 years, after getting a lawyer to draw up an agreement that, in the event that one of them died suddenly, gave the surviving partner the right to inherit her share of the property.

Moreover, Bernstein’s company extended benefits to her partner, a trend likely to grow. But Bernstein confesses sheepishly, “We never bothered to update any of that paperwork.”

It’s time to take care of that. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s decision not to keep challenging same-sex marriage has cleared the way for Bernstein and her partner of 30 years to marry. They’ll tie the knot on Thanksgiving weekend. “I suppose from then on we’ll just assume that we’ll copy what’s being done in the heterosexual world – right?” quips Bernstein.

And yes, that may mean that gay couples have to deal with the infamous IRS “marriage penalty”. Mark Germain recently broke the news to a New York couple that after they rushed off to get married, they’ll now be paying more in taxes.

“Marriage can solve some planning challenges but create new ones,” he admitted. “Married couples can see tax rates climb faster and a retired married couple can collect less in Social Security.”